Mafiaboy pleads guilty in hacker case
A Canadian teenager accused of crippling U.S. Web sites such as eBay and Yahoo last year pleads guilty to 56 of 66 charges against him.
The 16-year-old boy, nicknamed "Mafiaboy," is accused of paralyzing Web 
sites operated by CNN, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and eBay in February 2000. The attacks caused more than $1.7 billion in damages, RDI TV network said.
The teenager could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $660 (C$1,000), RDI added. His sentence will be determined after Quebec court hearings April 17 and April 18, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
The Web was rocked last year by an unprecedented series of attacks that temporarily blacked out several giant e-commerce and portal sites, drawing international attention.
Web portal Yahoo was the first to be hit by a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack; e-commerce sites Amazon.com, eBay and Buy.com, trading sites E*Trade and Datek Online, and CNN also were briefly brought down by the attacks.
In a denial-of-service attack, a hacker uses many computers to send a barrage of information requests to servers that host Web sites. The overwhelming stream of information often clogs a server network and paralyzes the site it hosts.
Mafiaboy will remain free until his sentence is known. His real name cannot be published under Canadian law, which protects the identity of minors in the court system.
Police officials announced Mafiaboy's arrest in April 2000 after a two-month investigation that involved the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A complete search of his home followed, and all computers and computer equipment within the home were confiscated, Canadian officials said at the time.
Copyright 2001, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
News.com staff contributed to this report.